Challenging obesity - Dying for a pizza is just plain stupid

EVEN though the evidence that too many Irish people, especially young people, are obese is unavoidable, some milestones along this road towards poor health, sedentary, unhappy lives still have the capacity to shock. Or at least they should have.

Today’s report that a fifth of our children have become so terribly oversized that they have to wear extraordinarily large clothes to make their First Communion is one of those moments.

Some eight-year-old girls have to wear dresses with a circus-proportion 48-inch chest for the ceremony. Boys that age sometimes need trousers with waistbands of 38 inches. These are our children, little more than infants in age, but they are struggling with sumo-sized bodies.